Another City, Not My Own

Even though I couldn’t wait to watch FX’s American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson (who didn’t want to see Ross Gellar play Robert Kardashian?), I was mostly on the edge of my seat to see who would portray my beloved Dominick Dunne. I legit GASPED the first time I saw the glasses on screen! OMG!!!

But I was pretty disappointed tbh. I feel like Robert Morse did resemble Dunne sort of, but the voice was wrong- hello, didn’t anyone bother to listen to Dunne’s fascinating book about the OJ trial before casting this girlie-voiced clown?

I won’t even talk about the size of this guy’s girth. Dominick Dunne hung out with the crème de la creme, people! You can’t be fat amongst those who lunch but do not eat! Fail.

Another City, Not My Own is a memoir about Dunne’s time spent in Los Angeles (or Los Angeleeeese, as he pronounces it) during the media circus that was the OJ Simpson trial. Dunne keeps everyone’s real names but his own- he maintains his alter ego, Augustus “Gus” Bailey, who, like Dunne, had a daughter who was savagely murdered. The parallels between the murder of Becky Bailey (Dominique Dunne), who was strangeled to death in the courtyard of her Los Angeles apartment by a jealous ex-boyfriend are staggering. The undercurrent of violence that permeates Dunne’s writings and his own simmering rage at the injustice of her death (Dunne’s murderer, John Thomas Sweeney, received just a few years in prison) is never more evident than in this book.

yes I did use these hands for the murders! these right here! dd in the background looking mad af. image source: vanityfair.com

God I need to get my hands on the mini-series of An Inconvenient Woman, People Like Us & A Season in Purgatory. I legit almost bought the audiobook Faye Resnick wrote the other day and now am sort of regretting that I didn’t.